Virtual Cell Challenge 2025 Hackathon II

Join CRG’s effort at sending a competitive submission to the Virtual Cell Challenge!
Second Edition of the VCC Hackathon

We are looking for proactive, research-driven teammates to collaborate with us.

A couple of groups at CRG have already started to collaborate on this challenge since June 2025, and research is moving fast.
We recently organized the first edition of the VCC Hackathon lead by Mathys Grapotte, which led to many ideas being explored and further refined throughout the summer (our first submission also happened during the first hackathon!).  
Now that we have mastered the evaluation and submission process, we hope this second edition of the VCC Hackathon will bring other opportunities to submit competitive proposals.  

Everyone is welcome to join. 

Why join the Virtual Cell Challenge AND our team?

1. You will be part of a committed, energetic, and collaborative group at CRG.

2. You will access high-quality single-cell perturbation datasets specifically designed for model training and evaluation.

3. You will generate scientific impact: accelerate drug discovery, develop new strategies for disease modeling, and even write a publication.

4. You will showcase your research and compete for prestigious recognition and substantial cash and technology prizes.

5. You will collaborate and compete with leading scientists, computational biologists, and AI researchers from academia.

What is the Virtual Cell Challenge?

Understanding, predicting, and ultimately programming how cells respond to internal cues and external stimuli is a fundamental challenge in biology.
Advances in single-cell RNA-seq technologies now enable large-scale measurements of cellular responses to genetic and chemical perturbations, fueling this exciting era of predictive cellular modeling.
Virtual Cell Challenge is a recurring, open, community-driven challenge supported by the ARC institute aimed at evaluating and improving computational models that predict cellular responses to genetic or chemical perturbations.
Essentially, ARC institute aims at building a "CASP competition" for gene regulation. 
For the first edition, participants must predict the effects of unseen CRISPRi knockdowns in H1 human embryonic stem cells.
Using new experimental data generated for the Challenge, we are building models that predict scRNAseq profiles from CRISPRi target genes.
 
Full description of the challenge can be found [HERE] and publication in CELL COMMENTARY [HERE]

Whether you’re a computational biologist, a machine learning enthusiast, or know about gene regulation — your expertise is welcome and valued.

When? September 18th, 10am-6pm
Where? Training Center CRG
Please confirm your attendance HERE

If you have any questions? Feel free to contact Mathys Grapotte (Notredame's lab) or training@crg.eu